Health Care For America

Several tens of millions of Americans in our day are tragically without any health insurance. What to do about this situation? Many people in government have advocated a national health care system, similar to ones found in Canada and several European countries. But it should be remembered that the American population is much larger than that of Canada and of most European countries; therefore, such a national health care program for America would be far more costly, than that found in the other countries.

President Theodore Roosevelt once said, "Under government ownership, corruption can flourish just as rankly as under private ownership." This statement is true: does a man change his basic moral character based on whether he is in the employ of government or of private industry? No evidence of that has yet been demonstrated anywhere.

Public opinion surveys in the past have shown that of twenty professions, politicians rank rock-bottom number twenty in the collective public esteem. Given that fact, it would be most foolish to place the administration of health care into the hands of politicians. If we cannot trust our political leaders to be fair and just in other matters, why should they be trustworthy in the administration of health care? The distribution of health care would necessarily be made on the basis of political considerations, as some segments of the American population would be inevitably favored over other segments of it. Politicized rationing of health care would be made sooner or later as well.

Given that people's health care needs vary widely, it would be extremely foolish to commit the American people to a single one-size-fits-all national scheme, even if the government officials administering it did so with the utmost of scrupulous honesty.

There is no provision in the U.S. Constitution explicitly authorizing the federal government to get involved into health care. This issue should be resolved by the needs of individual state and local governments, at the direction of their local citizenry. The federal government was originally created to perform only those tasks of which the individual states are absolutely incapable, and the state and local governments are perfectly capable of dealing with people's health problems.
One major problem existing today is that most of the American people have been completely brain-washed to the proposition that only the federal government is the right venue for addressing issues of social interest and concern such as health care, poverty alleviation, education, disaster relief, etc.

Those who have their own private health insurance plans should be allowed to retain them. Those who have no health insurance should be permitted a 100% income tax write-off on their medical treatment. Any and all health care expenses not covered by an insurance plan should likewise be permitted complete 100% tax write-off. Exception: Those who contract illnesses due to extraordinarily risky health practices should not be given any compassionate exemption from responsible payment from their own financial resources, for their health care. When a disease or injury is easily preventable, the general public should never be in any way obliged to financially under-write its medical treatment.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The American people should have the wisdom by now to say "no" to any absolutist power wielded over their lives by the government, and especially in the matter of health care.

-Lawrence K. Marsh












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